June 02, 2013- MANILA, Philippines - President Benigno Aquino III led the distribution of new service firearms of the personnel of Philippine National Police (PNP) in Camp Crame in Quezon City, Tuesday.
22,603 units of brand new generation 4 Glock 17 pistol had been distributed to police earlier, from a total of 74,879 pistols purchased from Glock Trust Trade Philippines, Asia.
The Glock 17 pistol is similar to modern guns used by 60% of the police force in America, Europe and Asia.
According to PNP chief Director General Alan Purisima, PNP saved more than two hundred million pesos (P200, 082,954.24) from a total of P1.2 billion budget allocated to purchasing the 9 millimeter pistol.
Each unit costs 16, 659.94 pesos which is much less than its retail price of 40, 940 pesos.
PNP's vision is to arm it's 148,000 strong police force including it's new recruits nationwide.
"As we witness the important event that brings us many steps forward in our objective to raise the capability and level of performance of our uniformed personnel," according to Purisima.
President Aquino believes that providing modern weapons to the police would help a lot to reduce criminality in the country.
"Nearly fifty percent of our police in service are without guns, meaning half of your rank are merely relying on their talismans or praying that the bullet might miss him on every encounter or negotiate with the notorious criminals to spare him," said President Aquino.
Aside from intensifying to curb criminality, the president also announced the ongoing "cleaning" of the police ranks.
"There are already no room for police who are "bossing" the streets or being a godfather of another bad element in our National Police. We will continue to exalt the dignity and integrity of your ranks, and for those ignores. I will make sure that their fate will be on our prisons that we are expanding lately.
Next year, PNP plans to buy new long firearms and patrol cars for the betterment of their service.
Meanwhile during the ceremony, President Aquino promoted P02 Edlyn Arbo and P02 Philip Moncatar for their outstanding performance.
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